The Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program provides all students the opportunity to examine women’s contributions and experiences in various historical and cultural contexts.
This is an inter-college program with course offerings at Augsburg University, Hamline University, St. Catherine University, and the University of St. Thomas. Courses are drawn from many disciplines and combine theoretical, practical, and research components that focus not only on gender, but also acknowledge that race, class, and sexual identity are crucial aspects of women’s experiences.
The Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program at Augsburg offers a minor, and provides students with academic preparation for careers in human services, education, and social work as well as graduate study.
What is Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies?
Women’s Studies began as a field of study in the late 1960s as a response to the exclusion of women’s contributions and perspectives from traditional academic disciplines. Early instigators of the Women’s Studies curriculum were also involved in the feminist movement, and this interconnection of academia and feminist activism continues today.
Over the past 40+ years, Women’s Studies has exploded in popularity, producing classes at nearly 600 colleges and universities in the US alone. In 2014, Augsburg changed the name of its program from Women’s Studies to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies in order to reflect the ways that the field has become more inclusive in its approach to analyzing gender and sexuality.
While there are few strict rules about what Women’s Studies should be, there are a few characteristics that define the field:
- Intersectional: While gender is a major focus of our courses, we are always attentive to the ways that experiences and identities vary depending on race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, ability, nationality, age, and religion.
- Interdisciplinary: We draw from the insights and contributions of many different academic disciplines, including history, English, sociology, political science, biology, and many more.
- Research-driven: Though Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies is inherently political, it is also based on decades of research across many fields of study. Our research methods are quite diverse, including surveys, film analyses, ethnographies, oral histories, literary analyses, and even instant messenger interviews.
- Connected: At the heart of Women’s Studies is the firm belief that academic analysis must be connected to our actions. In this way, Women’s Studies is deeply connected to Augsburg’s commitment to be involved with the Twin Cities community and with the broader world.